Lohri: A festival to be Celebrated with love and equality

Lohri is fundamentally an agricultural festival, and is celebrated on the 13th day of January, a day before Makar Sankranti. Lohri is filled with fun and merry-making. While, it is essentially a Punjabi festival, it is celebrated in many states of North India as well. It also marks the culmination of winter, and people also believe that it is the time after which the biting cold of the winters begins to taper off.

For Punjabis, Lohri is not merely a festival, but is an example of a way of life. People gather round the bonfires, throw sweets, puffed rice, and popcorn into the flames, sing popular songs and exchange greetings. During the day, children go from door to door singing songs in praise of Dulha Bhatti, the Punjabi version of Robin Hood, a thief who helped the poor and fought for their rights.

Lohri holds a special significance for the newly weds and the newborns. The first Lohri celebrated by a new bride or a newborn represents a grand occasion. It is celebrated with great fervor and on a larger scale. Females attire themselves in heavy clothes and jewelry, while men wear attractive clothes and turbans. The festival is then celebrated with traditional dancing and singing around the bonfire. This was my first Lohri after my marriage and the celebrations were huge. Song, dance, fun, frolic, food, decoration, gifts....the list was endless. The entire atmosphere was filled with exuberance and excitement. As for my friend, it was her son's first Lohri and the celebrations at her place were also grand.

There is however, a sad story behind the celebrations of Lohri which tells us the intensity of the still prevailing gender bias in our society. And I became a witness to this discrimination because it happened in my own neighborhood. I was surprised to see that the first Lohri of my neighbor's daughter was not celebrated on a grand scale. When I questioned them, they sternly replied that it was only a girl child, and so it did not demand a big celebration. It is painful to see that people still discriminate between a boy and a girl child. They make their actions so apparent that even a tender mind receives a wrong message. When my cousin's daughter asked me why our neighbors were not celebrating their Lohri in a grand manner in spite of the arrival of a newborn, I had no answer for her question. I did not want to tell her that even a joyous festival like Lohri is targeted by people to display how they discriminate between the two sexes.

If the alarming trend of gender bias against female children is not arrested immediately, it is bound to have dangerous repercussions on the society. So not just a family, these notions need to be changed on a wider scale for creating an unbiased society for women. Let us all pledge on this auspicious occasion of Lohri to eliminate gender bias from our minds completely and make this world equally desirable for both a girl and a boy child.